A division bench of Justices GS Sandhawalia and Harpreet Kaur Jeewan made the observation while sentencing dismissed Punjab Police DSP Balwinder Singh Sekhon and his aide Pardeep Sharma to six months in prison in a contempt of court case.
Notably, at the time when the sentence was announced, Sekhon raised the slogan “Judicial Gundagardi Murdabad” in open court.
According to the Court, this act compounded the contempt due to which it could not award a lesser sentence.
The Court noted that Sekhon and his aides had nearly 37,000 subscribers on social media platforms, where they were posting derogatory, malicious and libellous media against constitutional authorities and the judiciary.
In that backdrop, the Court observed,
“Mud-slinging by way of open publication and representation of such malicious material being circulated not only at the national but international level, amounts to inciting people at large against the Rule of Law and against one of the basic wing of the democratic set up under the Constitution of India consisting of the legislature, executive and the judiciary.“
Source: Barandbench
